{"id":50,"date":"2014-05-15T18:30:37","date_gmt":"2014-05-15T18:30:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mtin.net\/blog\/?p=50"},"modified":"2014-05-15T19:08:16","modified_gmt":"2014-05-15T19:08:16","slug":"the-double-edged-sword-of-being-a-consultant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.mtin.net\/blog\/the-double-edged-sword-of-being-a-consultant\/","title":{"rendered":"The double edged sword of being a consultant"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>For many being a consultant looks exciting looking in from the outside. \u00a0 The reality is a very stressful job. \u00a0Let&#8217;s dissect why most folks hire a consultant. It boils down to one of a few reasons<br \/>\n-They don&#8217;t have the people power to do everything they need<br \/>\n-They need things done they don&#8217;t have the knowledge base to accomplish tasks<br \/>\n-They want to focus on their business and offload some work to others<\/p>\n<p>So, how is this a bad thing for the consultant? I routinely run into two types of problems. \u00a0Either it&#8217;s a project or something broken. \u00a0Building a business model on something broken is not very sound. \u00a0So how do you keep money coming in? You take on projects. \u00a0Projects eat up time, but they keep food on the table. But as a result, this can take away from the issues that pop up.<\/p>\n<p>So the balancing act always is how do you take care of the critical broken stuff and still make a living? One way is Red Bull, loud music, and no sleep. \u00a0This only lasts for so long. \u00a0For many years I have said being in the ISP business is a lifestyle. \u00a0One of the biggest problems is supporting a company that has to be functional 24\/7\/365. \u00a0Pretty soon you run into a catch-22. \u00a0You need more people to help you support clients, but you need consistent business to support the new hires.<\/p>\n<p>Many consultants have supplemented their revenue by hardware and distribution. \u00a0Ive always felt that leads the consultant into being a little biased. \u00a0You might start recommending products which give you a higher profit margin or ones you have had sitting on the shelf. It would be an easy trap to fall into.<\/p>\n<p>Being a consultant is either feast or famine. \u00a0Sometimes you can be busy for days at a time and then days of nothing.<\/p>\n<p>Being a &#8220;break\/fix&#8221; consultant can be very stressful if you let it get to you. \u00a0The anxiety of going into a movie theater and turning off your cell phone is worse than having a gun pointed at you. \u00a0What if a major network outage happens? What if that core router takes a dump. \u00a0Now imaging you have not one, but 10 networks to worry about.<\/p>\n<p>Don&#8217;t get me wrong, being a consultant is something that i routinely enjoy. \u00a0You just have to be able to be strong enough to not let it overtake you. \u00a0Somedays that is easier said than done.<\/p>\n<p>So, what are we doing at MTIN about being better? We have a multi-Step program we are working on.<\/p>\n<p>1.We are hiring some junior techs to do things like open tickets, do routine maintenance tasks,<\/p>\n<p>2.We are forcing customers to use the 317.644.2224 telephone number and the support@mtin.net number. \u00a0This will make sure you are not depending on just one person. This will ensure you actually are talking to some.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For many being a consultant looks exciting looking in from the outside. \u00a0 The reality is a very stressful job. \u00a0Let&#8217;s dissect why most folks hire a consultant. It boils down to one of a few reasons -They don&#8217;t have the people power to do everything they need -They need things done they don&#8217;t have [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6VLMf-O","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2801,"url":"http:\/\/www.mtin.net\/blog\/upcoming-changes-at-mtin\/","url_meta":{"origin":50,"position":0},"title":"Upcoming changes at MTIN","author":"j2sw","date":"February 3, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Welcome to the second month of 2019. I have some exciting changes coming which will make this a more exciting year. These changes will affect how MTIN does business. As many of you have noticed I am doing more Youtube and similar projects.\u00a0 \u00a0These will be increasing. Look for more\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;News&quot;","block_context":{"text":"News","link":"http:\/\/www.mtin.net\/blog\/category\/news-2\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2133,"url":"http:\/\/www.mtin.net\/blog\/justin-wispamerica\/","url_meta":{"origin":50,"position":1},"title":"Justin @ WISPAMERICA","author":"j2sw","date":"March 5, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"I will be attending WISPAMERICA next week. I will be a panelist on the Transitioning from a bridged to a routed network on Monday from 2:15-3:15 I will be moderating the Layering Redundancy across the network on Monday from 3:45-4:45 On Thursday I will be a panelist on Advanced BGP\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;News&quot;","block_context":{"text":"News","link":"http:\/\/www.mtin.net\/blog\/category\/news-2\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.mtin.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/18685684_10155327879655763_1914436669_n.png?fit=480%2C672&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2430,"url":"http:\/\/www.mtin.net\/blog\/mtin-announces-new-plans-effective-october-31-2018\/","url_meta":{"origin":50,"position":2},"title":"MTIN announces new plans effective October 31 2018","author":"j2sw","date":"September 10, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Due to several opportunities, MTIN is moving toward collapsed support plan style.\u00a0 We\u00a0will only be offering a contract support model and best effort service. Contract Support Customers purchase a minimum 5 hour block for $445. Rates are billed as follows. Normal Business Hours (8am-5pm EST time)\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Site News&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Site News","link":"http:\/\/www.mtin.net\/blog\/category\/site-news\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1106,"url":"http:\/\/www.mtin.net\/blog\/mtin-announces-new-pricing-tiers\/","url_meta":{"origin":50,"position":3},"title":"MTIN announces new pricing tiers","author":"j2sw","date":"April 20, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"MTIN is happy to announce support tiers for our clients. \u00a0This allows us to grow, while still being in budget range of the smaller operators. \u00a0This is our first rate increase in over 3 years. \u00a0By breaking our rates into two tiers this allows us to grow our increasing client\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Site News&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Site News","link":"http:\/\/www.mtin.net\/blog\/category\/site-news\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2391,"url":"http:\/\/www.mtin.net\/blog\/bandwidth-and-the-wisp\/","url_meta":{"origin":50,"position":4},"title":"Bandwidth and the WISP","author":"j2sw","date":"August 21, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"This was an older article I had on my blog a few years ago.\u00a0 Much of this applies still. Bandwidth is a big hurdle most aspiring WISPs face. The reason is if high-speed alternatives were already in place, the need for a WISP would not be as great.\u00a0 Sure there\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;WISP&quot;","block_context":{"text":"WISP","link":"http:\/\/www.mtin.net\/blog\/category\/wisp\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2355,"url":"http:\/\/www.mtin.net\/blog\/ubnt-vs-cambium\/","url_meta":{"origin":50,"position":5},"title":"UBNT vs Cambium -The legal battle","author":"j2sw","date":"August 11, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"The Recently, it was announced that Ubiquiti Networks Inc (UBNT) is suing Cambium over the Cambium Elevate.\u00a0 \u00a0This will be a long post, so sit back with your favorite beverage and read away. Disclaimers. I have been in the ISP world since 1991. I cut my teeth on BBS systems\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Cambium&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Cambium","link":"http:\/\/www.mtin.net\/blog\/category\/cambium\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.mtin.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/image1.jpeg?fit=544%2C640&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mtin.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mtin.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mtin.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mtin.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mtin.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.mtin.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mtin.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mtin.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mtin.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}